During 5-on-5 play, the Washington Capitals played an uneven game against the Columbus Blue Jackets, but it didn’t matter. Friday night’s game was decided by the power play, and the power play did not decide in the Caps’ favor.

The Caps played well in the first period but earned nothing for their effort. Instead, Oliver Bjorkstrand notched a power-play goal for Columbus. The Caps played like garbage in the second period but were perversely rewarded with a power-play goal from Matt Niskanen’s cannon. Then in the third, with yet another special-teams goal, Anthony Duclair gave the Jackets the winning margin.

Caps lose 2-1.

51-year-old referee Brad Meier took a nasty fall in the first period, apparently injuring his knee. He did not return. Hope he’s alright.

Man, the Capitals ran the show in the first period. Natural Stat Trick said most of the Caps’ bottom six didn’t see Columbus get any meaningful offense. It was awesome, but it didn’t yield any goals, so the Caps tried something totally different in the second period. Shot attempts went 27 to 6 there, and not in the good way.

But the flow of play and who scores are not closely correlated in small samples, or, in the parlance of Friday night, stuff happens. The Jackets scored in the first and the Caps scored in the second – both times on special teams, both times by the confluence of opponent mistakes and strong team play.

Matt Niskanen‘s slapper was excellent, but so too was Backstrom’s setup and the net-front presence from Ovechkin and Oshie.

No John Carlson? No problem! Matt Niskanen scores on the PP and we are all tied up!

Also we did a story about Braden Holtby‘s clothes. We were workshopping the jokes in chat, and now I can’t get rid of the idea of Holtby as a haunted bottle of fancy wine come to life like Beauty and the Beast in reverse.

The Caps’ cancer fundraiser did huge tonight, securing $116,820 for Hockey Fights Cancer. Between that and the charitable sacrifice made by the 50/50 raffle winner earlier this week, I’m feeling very good about the community right now. Don’t ruin it now, RMNB Facebook comments.

Carlson and Orpik out, Hershey defenseman Jonas Seigenthalermade his NHL debut, which, I’m told, was also the first NHL game for a Thai person. It wasn’t an easy outing for Jonas, but it’s not like he stuck out on a team of struggling boys.

When Chris puts together his numbers for the morning after, you’ll see some weird contours to this game. The Caps really did have control of this game before the Jacket’s first PPG. Then they got blown out, then it got more even. Just a thoroughly bizarre game in which the league’s worst power-play team beat the league’s best power-play team through the strength of their power play.